Carrol Cox
>Mark is
> proposing mass slaughter.
Carrol, please don't give currency to this unforgivable slander, whatever
your rationale may be.
Mark
=====
It's amazing that, on a list supposedly chock-full of folks well-versed in
dialectical reasoning, there is so much either/or deductivism. To point out
that there is over-population, relative to food and energy supplies and
current consumption levels, does not automatically qualify anyone as a Pol
Pot.
In the third segment of my review of Leigh's "Wilson Plot", I begin by
casting doubt on the efficacy of a hypothetical proletarian revolution in
Britain following the Second World War. However, I conclude by saying that
Old Labour's downfall was in making a compromise with the uncompromising.
Where is the solution in that? To live with the apparent paradox is to give
yourself sufficient grounds for the formulation of a workable course of
action. In the case of Britain (and anywhere else, for that matter), the
task of revolution is colossal, and should be recognised as such. Someone
called Lenin had no illusions about the problems facing the Bolsheviks after
October 1917. That does not mean that his answers were spot on, but given
his unprecedented circumstances we might do well to learn from them. An
important aspect of any revolutionary activity is to change the mindset of
those who are supposedly the beneficiaries of any revolution. The status quo
is not just an economic base and political/legal superstructure, but a
cultural entity that requires to be as subject to a ruthless criticism of
all that exists in order for revolution not to succumb to
counter-revolutionary trends latent within the revolution, let alone the
reaction opposing from without. In the Britain of the immediate post war
period (and even now, some might argue), there was too much residual
attachment to the legacy of empire, and all the Kiplingesque orientalism and
clinging to imperialist totems that this entailed. The answer, I believe, is
to recognise the length of the slog ahead, and to employ all means necessary
to achieve both incremental and discrete change, mindful of strategy as well
as tactics. Until the Kinnock regime clasped hands with MI5 and the
Conservative establishment, there was sufficient hope that the Labour Party
could act as a vehicle of significant progressive change in Britain (enough
for E. P. Thompson, for instance). That scope for progressivism has shrunk
to microscopic proportions, especially with the Blair ascendancy. That's why
I have so little respect for ex-Communist Party members, Stalinist and
eurocommunist, who spent long careers spouting against the wicked
compromises of Attlee, Wilson and Callaghan, but who now preach "critical
support" for Blair. Give me Roy Hattersley any day. The answer, more than
ever, lies outside the Labour Party, which is why the development of
vehicles like the Scottish Socialist Party and the Socialist Alliance is so
promising. Even Plaid Cymru has adopted policies far to the left of New
Labour. I fear that the Socialist Labour Party is doomed to a sectarian
fate, although I would like to be wrong. But devolution and
extra-Parliamentary movements are where the action is now, more than ever,
since Parliament, thanks to Thatcher and Blair, has effectively been
emasculated. This is the crisis facing England (bar London) just now: the
last "region" of the UK without any effective form of local representation.
New Labour's "big tent" strategy will serve only to increase nationalistic
resentment against the other parts of the UK that do express their own
democratic aspirations and achieve apparently superior outcomes, whilst
stoking the kind of racist tension and violence that has, with apparent
suddenness, flared in the last few months.
Meanwhile, back to reality. Greater honesty and a little more generosity
among list participants would improve discourse immeasurably. So, too, would
resistance to knee-jerk rebuttals that do not advance discussion one iota.
Michael K.
